Sleeping Tigers (25 page)
I agreed. I was worn out and eager to escape the clamor of Kathmandu’s tourist center.
As we started walking toward a hill that rose above the city, I wondered what combination of fate and choice had brought Leslie to this point in her life. With her posh accent and pert features, she could scrub herself up, slip into a little black dress and pearls, and take over as director of an art gallery or pose as some business mogul’s trophy wife. Yet she had mentioned no family, no apartment or house.
All around us, though, were people like Leslie. Europeans, Australians, Americans, and a smattering of Japanese wandered the streets of Kathmandu, many teetering like ants beneath sugar cubes as they lugged oversized backpacks from one budget hotel to another in search of exotica at bargain rates.
“Cam must feel right at home here,” I told Leslie, watching the cotton-clad, sandaled men and women who seemed to be roving through Asia on a few dollars and a lot of hope, searching for enlightenment the way surfers scan the horizon for the next wave.
“Everyone does,” Leslie said. “That’s the wonderful thing about Kathmandu.”
The small temples we passed on every corner of Kathmandu acted as bustling business establishments. Barbers, shoe shine boys, masseuses, and even nose hair trimmers offered services on the temple steps. The secular and the divine rubbed shoulders on the streets. Even I felt like I could pray here, to the gods and mountains, to the rivers and women: to all that made up the precarious existence of humans on earth.
The street funneled us onto a rickety footbridge over a river. The water was murky with stinking sludge, yet most Nepalese ignored the bridge and waded through the turgid goo with enormous bundles balanced on their heads and shoulders. Two men even carried a brass bed, its frame strapped to their backs.
On the other side, along a road where dust rose in plumes around our faces, we arrived at the foot of Swayambhunath, the Monkey Temple. As Leslie and I hiked up its steep slopes, the clouds began to roll in. Scruffy monkeys snatched at our cameras and purses, startling me not with their gestures, but with the way their little faces crumpled in greed. We hurried past a long line of women whose voices were joined in nasal prayer just as it started to rain.
Far below, Kathmandu’s red brick buildings spread across the steeply terraced green fields below the mountains like a storybook kingdom as monks in saffron robes turned prayer wheels at the temple. The painted eyes of Buddha observed us from the central stupa, where Nepalese women sat passively waiting for the rains, turning their handheld prayer wheels and facing the sky.
Watching them, I felt like a dodo bird among finches, big and awkward and scrambling to fly. What would I pray for here, if I could?
I put my hand out and turned the prayer wheel slowly, picturing Paris in her knitted strawberry hat playing on the floor with my mother, and prayed for my family to be healthy and whole.
Leslie walked me back to the Hotel Everest in the drenching rain and cast a horrified glance at my room. “You can’t stay in this hell hole,” she proclaimed, studying the cracked plaster walls and mossy tiled floor. “This is dreadful, and you’re paying twice as much. Come share my room at Earth House Lodge.”
I agreed, and left a note for Jon and Cam in case they returned. I was still planning to check the American Express office this afternoon. Later, Leslie was going to take me to Durbar Square to visit another slew of lodges before dinner.
With its rounded doors, heavy dark beams, wooden shutters, and bamboo furniture, the Earth House looked as though it had been designed by Druids. It was crammed with travelers with iPods, paperbacks, or electronic readers in the lounge; I might as well have been in one of San Francisco’s cafes.
Leslie napped that afternoon while I showered and took a taxi through the rain to the American Express office. I wore my best teacher’s outfit–a black skirt and pink cotton blouse, with black wedge sandals–to give an impression of authority. I wanted to look trustworthy, as though I deserved information.
The Nepalese women in the office spoke English with a British accent. Each wore a silk sari but was made up like a Dallas cheerleader. When it was my turn at the counter, I gave Jon’s name, rather than Cam’s, since I thought Jon was more likely to receive mail. The youngest woman in the office, a shy girl with the sleepy eyes of a child, said that Jon had collected his mail there regularly.
“Until four days ago,” she added, turning around with a stack of letters between her long fingernails to wave at me across the counter. “Then he is coming no more.”
My heart sank. Where could Cam and Jon have gone? I didn’t think they’d go south to India, because of the heat, but they might have decided to trek to cooler elevations.
Just as I turned towards the door, another office clerk–this one in a pistachio green sari who had powdered the part in her black hair a bright red– rapped on the counter with her knuckles. “He will be returning tomorrow,” she said.
“What?” I wheeled around. “How do you know?”
She shrugged her shoulders which, tightly encased in the orange fabric of her sari shirt, looked as round and shiny as waxed Christmas oranges. “Your brother’s friend, he has asked us to hold the mail in his box until he can come tomorrow,” she said. “He was here with your brother, that boy in the picture, and he told me that himself.”
Tomorrow, then, I would stake out the American Express office all day. I checked the hours posted on the door, thanked the women, and stepped outside. The rain had stopped and the clouds were clearing like curtains parting on a stage.
I found a quiet corner in an alley and phoned my mother. Her voice was surprisingly clear on the line. “Are you all right? I’ve been frantic!”
“I’m fine, Mom. And I think I can track Cam down tomorrow. Jon’s supposed to pick up his mail at American Express.”
“American Express!” my mother said happily. She was relieved, I supposed, to think that I would be waiting someplace so clean, so efficient, so official. So American.
“How’s Paris?”
“She took her first steps alone!” Mom exclaimed. “Made it from the kitchen counter to your bed, the little monkey.”
I bit my lip, overcome with an indiscernible emotion. Then it came to me: envy. I wanted to be the one to see Paris take her first solo steps! I felt cheated.
Well, I’d see her walk when I got home, wouldn’t I? And by then this entire mess would be settled. I told my mother where I was staying before trudging back to Earth House.
After her shower, Leslie’s hair floated about her shoulders like a yellow scarf. She had changed her clothes, too: She wore a short blue batik skirt with a pink tank top. As a final touch she’d tied a rainbow canvas belt around her tiny waist. I couldn’t decide whether she looked more like a harem girl or an orphan boy.
“Time to tear up the town!” Leslie said, punctuating this announcement with her trademark hacking cough. She doubled over. “Bloody hell!”
“You’d better stay in bed,” I said, leading her by the arm to her bed and propping her against the pillows like an oversized doll. “Come on, you don’t seriously think you should go out, do you?” Even as I said it, I realized that I was mothering her again.
“Well, I’ve got to eat,” Leslie wheezed when she was able to speak again. “Besides, if we go to Durbar Square, we’re a lot more likely to run into your people than we are in this sty.”
“I’m planning to catch up with Jon at the American Express Office tomorrow.”
“What if he doesn’t show?” Leslie asked. “Anyway, aren’t you at all hungry? Come on! I promise to be a good girl and shovel down heaps and heaps of rice and tea.”
I was famished, truthfully. “All right. Let’s go.”
She stopped me with an upraised hand. “Wait! You’re not going like that, are you? You look like a bank teller!”
“Or a teacher?” I said. At least I hadn’t worn a hair band.
Leslie cocked her head at me. “Do us a favor and change your top, anyway.”
“Doesn’t seem worth the bother, does it? Then I just have more clothes to wash.”
Leslie ignored this and fumbled around in her own backpack. I accepted the pale blue sweater and strappy sandals she handed me. I had left Massachusetts for San Francisco because I wanted to change my life; I just hadn’t anticipated that updating my wardrobe would be part of that transformation.
It was true, though, that dressing differently made me feel different. Even my posture and stride were altered, I noticed, as we meandered through the gathering darkness to Durbar Square. Because of the sandals and soft sweater, my back was arched and I held my head higher.
The evening light was lavender, which made the red buildings look bruised and tired. At Durbar Square, Leslie asked if I’d heard of Kumari, the Living Goddess. I hadn’t.
She led me in the direction of an ornate temple. “She’s a Hindu goddess, but always selected from Buddhist families of the highest caste,” Leslie explained. “Kumari is really Tuleju, the protective spirit of the Kathmandu Valley, who got really ticked off when the King made an improper advance. She threatened to leave Kathmandu forever, but the King begged her to stay. She agreed, but only if she could come back as a prepubescent girl, so that the King would never be tempted to touch her again. The girl who’s chosen as Kumari has to go through a sort of Miss Spirit World pageant to earn the title.”
I stared at the enormous temple. When I examined the wood more closely, I could see that the carvings were of deer, fish, peacocks, snakes, men, and women. The people and creatures were all twined about one another in sexual positions, some loving, others so lewd and painful looking that I had to avert my eyes.
I nearly had to hold my nose, too; the courtyard stank of rotting food and fish, sewage and damp wood. Even goddesses tossed their garbage out the windows in Kathmandu, apparently.
Leslie was explaining that each girl chosen to fulfill the role of Kumari had to pass multiple tests of perfection to earn the title of “Living Goddess.” The final test consisted of walking through the inner courtyard of the temple past the heads of 108 slain buffalo, candles flickering between their horns.
“Kumari can’t show any fear during the tests,” Leslie finished in a whisper, “and her reward for passing them is to live in this ghastly place, bestowing blessings on everyone, even the King of Nepal.”
“Does she stay here until she dies?”
“No,” Leslie said, explaining that, after puberty, the girl went back to her village, but as a former Kumari, didn’t usually marry despite a generous government dowry. “Rumor has it that any man who marries a Kumari is bound for early death.” She laughed. “Of course, staying single’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? Nothing’s scarier than the thought of ending up married to the wrong bloke. Think of me and my spiritual husband.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I’m beginning to think it’s not marriage that’s so scary. It’s love. Just plain, ordinary love.”
For dinner, Leslie took me to a place called Marco Polo. We checked several more lodges on the way with no luck, then ducked into a low rounded doorway.
“Here we are,” she said, gesturing at the red-checked tablecloths and flickering candles as if she owned the place. “If your brother and his mates are anywhere within fifty miles of Kathmandu, they’re bound to turn up here eventually. It’s the only place in town that serves decent pizza.”
Marco Polo was small, dim, and low-ceilinged. A few disgruntled plants huddled along the windowsills. Outside, cows cruised by with puzzled faces. Despite its humble appearance, the restaurant was crammed with travelers swapping tales: lost passports, missed trains, worst bus rides, where to go next.